Foo Fighters at the Key Arena

The Foo Fighters performed at the Key Arena last night, yours truly was there to witness the epic event. These guys sure know how to put on one helluva show. Since no blog post is complete without a wikipedia citation, let me copypaste the lines that a friend quoted near-verbatim at the concert, when another friend asked about the band’s name:

Grohl completed an album’s worth of material in five days and handed out cassette copies of the sessions to his friends for feedback. Grohl hoped to keep his anonymity and release the recordings in a limited run under the title “Foo Fighters”, taken from the World War II term “foo fighter”, used to refer to unidentified flying objects. However, the demo tape circulated in the music industry, creating interest among record labels. Grohl formed a band to support the album.

Openers for the show Minus the Bear didn’t impress me that much; the second act SuperGrass was very slick and enjoyable. SuperGrass seems to be a big favorite of the Foos — the rather funny Foo Fighters purchaser contract specifically says“Artist shall not be required to share dressing room with any other performer, except Supergrass, Oasis or maybe Led Zeppelin.”

In David Grohl’s own words, “this isn’t your 1 hour show… or your 1 and a half hour show… or your 2 hour show… we’re going to play till we’re done!”. And boy did they play — one hit after another, set after set, all the way close to midnight.

They played all the songs I was hoping for; my all-time favorite Learn To Fly was in the first set, and they ended the show with Aurora. I was impressed with the “2nd stage” they had — it was an accoustic stage at the rear end of the arena, much closer to where all the “sucky seats are” (Grohl’s words, not mine). The stage was lowered from the top of the arena, and hosted the extended version of the band, including violinist Petra Haden and original Foo Fighters / Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear. (The calculator + egg video in the previous post is Petra’s song)

All in all, a great show, well worth the time, money, and temporary loss of hearing.